Ethnography on/of the Internet

OII 2013

Eric T. MeyerOxford Internet Institute, www.oii.ox.ac.uk @etmeyer

Bronislaw Malinowski with Trobriand Islanders in 1918.

Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)

NAPOLEON CHAGNON with the Yanomamo Indians he studied in the Brazilian Amazon ca 1960s-1990s

Source 1: http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/Malinowski-odyssey-of-an-anthropologist/2005/06/02/1117568312895.htmlSource 2: http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/329 Source 3: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anthropologys-darkest-hou

Kula Ring

Source: https://webspace.yale.edu/anth500/projects/01_Curley/KulaHomePage.html

Ethnography and the Internet

OR

Ethnography, and the Internet

Fieldwork boundaries

• As part of my doctoral studies, I conducted ethnographic research last year at a university campus in Kathmandu, Nepal. In the course of my fieldwork it turned out that the majority of my research participants were very actively using Facebook (usually relying on their mobile phones to access the internet). I hadn't anticipated that this source of information would play such a big role for my project and hence want to see whether and how I could use the information for my analysis. (Andrea Koelbel)

Questions from past students

Fieldwork boundaries

• A central question/issue I have, surrounds how to study a viral "moment" or event in social media space and, thus, how to best conduct online ethnographic research retroactively. (Starr Thibido)

• How does one combine online ethnography with more traditional historical research methods? Any particularly successful examples? (Bo Ærenlund Sørensen)

Questions from past students

Fieldwork boundaries

• I am interested in capturing the frames the actors use to represent the technology, as well as their viewpoints, which I’d define as the combination of a specific perspective on the issue with the social position of the actor. How would I capture this online ethnography? (Nils Markusson)

Questions from past students

Understanding the field

• Is the problems with overcoming cultural difference (and understanding a foreign culture) different when working with online rather than offline ethnography? (Bo Ærenlund Sørensen)

Questions from past students

Methods: Old and new

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jemshed/4123591152/ Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johanl/4375773612/

Source: http://www.analytictech.com/borgatti/etk3.htm

Source: Jacob Nielsen (1995). Card Sorting to Discover the Users' Model of the Information Space. http://www.useit.com/papers/sun/cardsort.html

Card sorts / pile sorts

Source: Horowitz, D.M. (2007). Applying Cultural Consensus Analysis To Marketing. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Florida State University, Department of Marketing

Triad Tests

Source: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~bstraigh/AN240/Lecture7.htm

Source: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/axfight/complin.html

Lineages related to Timothy Asch / Napoleon Chagnon film The Axe Fight

Source: http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/hogan/graphics/

Bernie Hogan: Group Structure in Facebook

Family

Local Friends

Three co-worker groups Friends

Method choices

• From where I sit it looks like some people make node-and-spoke diagrams (or the equivalent) and some cluster primary quotes from participants. I’m interested in methods that bring these approaches together in an attempt to communicate what is happening out there (David White)

Questions from past students

Dealing with data

• Secondly, I'm sure this is an issue most people face when working in a 'black hole' medium, but I also still wonder how to make sense of a specific topic when it is (by nature) immersed in a world of endless big data. As I hone in on certain themes and aspects of KONY 2012, how do I weigh and assess the risks of leaving out other aspects of the movement? In other words, what is the best way to set parameters of the research to avoid 'information overload' without having a negative impact on the quality/holistic portrait being created (e.g. which, if any, participants/consumers of the movement to follow, etc.)? (Starr Thibido)

Questions from past students

Tools and recording

• How do I record the information I get (print screens?, shall I use any specific programme such as Nvivo?) (Dominique Jolivet)

• I'd particularly like practical help eg. how to record and reference online sources. Eg. is it acceptable to take screenshots of relevant sources as a record (particularly as eg. personal websites often change), and what conventions are best for referencing. (Kitty Wheater)

Questions from past students

Other tools for ethnography on/of the Internet Lurking? (Hine)

Hyperlink analysis (Webometric Analyst)

Blog data: coding and deep reading

Textual analysis

Coding texts, notes, images, etc (NVivo, ATLAS.ti, MaxQDA, CAT, Dedoose, others)

Social networks (NodeXL, NameGen)

Web archives (HTTrack)

Twitter (TAGS)

Email archives

Photo voice / Photo-elicitation interviews

Quant data (traces of activity like log files?)

Crowd-sourcing

Reflexivity – blogging your research (Wordpress / Livejournal)

Other tools for ethnography on/of the Internet Dropbox to store and backup files

Photobucket / Flickr

MindMaps (Compendium, Vue)

Fraps (capture game video)

Greenshot or SnagIt or other programs to capture screen (including scrolling windows)

Evernote / OneNote / Zotero

Freeforums

Recording

Livescribe pen

Zoom and Olympus recorders

iPhone

Cameras / iPhones with GPS tagging on

Bronislaw Malinowski with Trobriand Islanders in 1918.

Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)

NAPOLEON CHAGNON with the Yanomamo Indians he studied in the Brazilian Amazon ca 1960s-1990s

Source 1: http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/Malinowski-odyssey-of-an-anthropologist/2005/06/02/1117568312895.htmlSource 2: http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/329 Source 3: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anthropologys-darkest-hou

Innikka Equipped with the Amice of Brilliant Light from the Black TempleSource: Nardi (2010). My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft

Source of Gorean image: Bardzell & Odom (2008). The Experience of Embodied Space in Virtual Worlds: An Ethnography of a Second Life Community. space and culture 11(3): 239-259

Tom Boellstorff/Tom BukowskiCOMING OF AGE IN SECOND LIFE (2008)Image Source: http://www.spiritofthesenses.org/secondlifesalon.htm

Online / offline

Information Ethnographers of interest (list courtesy of David Hakken, Indiana University, available at : http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/courses/descriptions/I651.doc)

John Anderson, anthropology, Catholic University (Arab informatics)

Steve Barley, management, Stanford (Researching engineers in Silicon Valley)

Genevieve Bell, anthropologist, Intel (Cross-cultural study of technology, especially Asia)

Tom Boellstorff, UC Irvine (Anthropology)

Pablo Boczkowski, MIT (Sloan School of Management)

Gabriella Coleman, anthropology, University of Chicago (Open Source and the Cultural Imaginary)

Andy Crabtree, Sociology, University of Nottingham, UK (organizations, systems development; rapid ethnographic assessment)

Joe Dumit, anthropology, (Director of STS program, UC-Davis)

Jan English-Lueck, Anthropology, San Jose State (Silicon Valley Project)

Joan Fujimura (Sociology, University of Wisconsin)

Keith Hampton, MIT (Department of Urban Studies and Planning)

Penny Harvey, anthropologist, University of Manchester (UK) (Museum informatics)

Stephen Helmreich, History of Consciousness, MIT (Artificial Life, Bio-informatics)

Adrienne Jenik, UCSD, (Computer and Media Arts)

Lori Kendall, SUNY Purchase (Sociology)

Jean Lave, Education and anthropology, University of California at Berkeley

Gustavo Mesch, University of Haifa (Sociology and Anthropology)

Bonnie Nardi, (Informatics, UC-Irvine)

Carsten Oesterlund, Information Studies, Syracuse University (health informatics)

Wanda Orlikowski, management, MIT (organizational informatics)

Bryan Pfaffenberger, anthropology in the School of Engineering, University of Virginia (technology)

Sandeep Sahay, Informatics, University of Oslo (development informatics)

Susan Leigh Star, Sociology, University of Santa Clara (Classification; science informatics)

Lucy Suchman, anthropology/ethnomethodology, University of Lancaster (UK)

Sharon Traweek, UCLA (science informatics)

Sherry Turkle, MIT (Sociology)

Nina Wakeford University of Surrey (Sociology and INCITE)

Ethics

• I worry about ethical issues: How to use information found online & how to participate on the online community (do you mention that you are a researcher?) (Dominique Jolivet)

• How can one approach the ethics of online ethnography? Should one inform people who are being cited of the purposes of the research? Is it ethical to directly quote from the web from people who are not aware that their words are being used for other purposes? Olivia Sheringham

Questions from past students

Ethics

• Consideration of ethics of using eg. posts on publicly-assessed messaging boards would also be helpful. I would also add, discussion of the ethics of 'participation' online as well as 'observation' - eg. construction of blogs in the field, contributing to websites of organisations that may form the object of study, etc. (Kitty Wheater)

Questions from past students

Ethics

• I'm most interested in discussing the ethics of conducting online ethnographic research, particularly in relation to piracy and illegal activities. My research will involve the close analysis of the communities around BitTorrent trackers, so I'd also like to discuss how to get informants in these situations to trust researchers enough to provide truthful answers. (Blake Durham)

Questions from past students

Authenticity and trust

• How valid is the information? People can say anything on the internet – how can researchers know that what they are reading is a true representation of reality? Can you really ‘trust’ online sources? What can you do to make sure it is as reliable as possible? (Olivia Sheringham)

Questions from past students

Eric T. Meyereric.meyer@oii.ox.ac.uk

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=120

• In groups of two plan how you would go about doing a virtual ethnography for one of the communities you selected earlier.

• Think about:– constructing the study– gathering and managing the data– the methods you would use– analysing the data – issues when analysing the data – ethical considerations

Practical exercise: planning a virtual ethnography